by Elder Mike Chon

I remember an incident that happened while playing basketball in high school. I leaped up to dunk the ball (the basket was lower than your typical basket), when I was rudely interrupted by a very tall guy and was pulled down backward onto my hands. Immediately I felt this great pain in my wrists…and as I looked at my forearms I saw them suddenly expand to twice their normal size. As much as I mentally tried to move my wrists, I couldn’t. As my friends watched me attempting to move my wrists to no avail, they encouraged me to go see a doctor. But since I was your typical high school male, I figured I didn’t need to go see a doctor; and with my extensive high school medical background, I self-diagnosed myself with a wrist sprain. But as time went on and I continued to be unable to move my wrists, I realized that my initial diagnosis of a wrist sprain might be wrong…and so I went to the neighborhood urgent care. Thankfully, after x-rays, it was determined that I only fractured my left wrist in three places and my right wrist was fine. For those wondering I have since fully recovered from these injuries.

What if I continued to believe that my wrist was perfectly fine? I would have continued with my life, the fractures would have healed improperly, which likely would have affected my ability to use my left wrist permanently. If no one told me that I needed to go see a doctor I probably would never have gone. Even though I had fractured bones in my wrist, I was in denial of anything wrong. Spiritually speaking there are many people in this world that are ignorant about their sin and their rejection of the one and only God. They don’t see anything wrong with their lives because outwardly they are not criminals.  After all, they’ve never murdered anyone and have tried to do good to others. What could possibly be wrong? The Bible speaks clearly that man’s heart has been darkened and has exchanged the glory of God for images resembling man and beast (Rom. 1:21-23). In the heart of man they worship the creation and not the Creator. The problem is that those that are doing this do not even know that they are doing something that is offensive and worthy of condemnation before our Holy God. Their hearts have been darkened to believe that their lives are good when in reality they are evil (John 3:19). So how should we respond to those that are ignorant of their ignorance?

Instead of turning our back on them we should respond with compassion. Their ignorance is the result of sin which has darkened their hearts and minds to understand the truth, a reality which we all have experienced. The compassion we see in Christ as he hung on the cross and pleaded with God to forgive those that crucified and mocked Him (Luke 23:34) because of their ignorance should be ringing in our hearts as we observe those who do not know what they are doing. That should motivate and stir our hearts to share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. This isn’t the time to believe that we are smarter, holier, or more important because we know the truth and they don’t. Instead we should humbly step forward and share the only message (Rom. 1:16) that is able to correct them of their ignorance, to bring light to their darkened hearts, and save them from an eternity in hell.